Asian Science
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Abstract: The aim of this study was to characterized and to estimate the extent of genetic variation and character association of organoleptic quality attributes of Coffea arabica accessions from Limu (Jimma, Ethiopia). Forty nine coffee germplasm accessions which have little or no information about their genetic variability together with two checks were planted in the field at Agaro Agricultural Research Sub Center, Ethiopia from 2004 to 2009. Simple lattice design with two replications was used in this particular study. Variances component method was used to estimate genetic variation, heritability and genetic advance. Relationship among traits was also estimated using standard method. The germplasm accessions differ significantly for most of the traits. Analysis of variance, variance components, phenotypic and genotypic associations, cluster analysis and principal components were computed for the sensorial quality attributes studied. The results depicted significant variations among coffee accessions for cup quality attributes studied, except aromatic intensity, bitterness, astringency and body. There was high phenotypic coefficient of variation for astringency and bitterness. This is in contrast to the low phenotypic coefficients of variation recorded for aromatic intensity and body. In principal component analysis, the first three principal components with eigen values greater than one explained 81.4% of the total variation. The first two principal components accounted with percent variability of 52.87 and 17.77%, respectively explained 70.64% of the total variability among the coffee germplasm. These were grouped into three genetically divergent clusters and three uncorrelated principal components. In general, our findings show that more than half percent of the Limu accessions had similar quality attributes with the standard checks. The results also confirmed the presence of variability in most quality attributes among the Limu coffee accessions and this could be exploited in the future genetic improvements.